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What Actually Happened on the Train and at the District Court Peter Zohrab 2017

That Thursday was the last day of lectures for two of my three courses, so I was bound to attend, so as to find out about the upcoming examinations. That fact would have been known to various people. I took the 7:05 train from Paraparaumu to Wellington, since that was the last train that would get me to Wellington in time for me to walk to Victoria University of Wellington in time for my first lecture.

On the platform, near where I always stand (near the top of the stairs from the subway, to the left), was a circle of women, focussed on a butch Lesbian, who was clearly the focal point of the group, judging by the way they interacted (i.e. all the talking was done by her or to her)1. A dark-haired man approached (who I later learned was named Chris Vertongen), and appeared to want to join the circle, but was initially ignored2, until eventually he managed to gain the attention of one of the women (a blonde, as I recall), who started interacting with him. All these people were Whites. I have never seen that group before, in that circular formation, but I have not often (if at all) taken the train at that time on a Thursday morning.

The train arrived, and I got into the nearest carriage (as always). The butch Lesbian stood beside the doorway and glared at me3. I assumed that she hadn't liked the way I had been looking at the group. I am interested in butch Lesbians, because Lesbians have long been prominent in the Women's Movement and particularly so with respect to an issue in which I am particularly interested: domestic violence. For example, when I once served a summons on the headquarters of the anti-male domestic violence organization, National Network of Stopping Violence Services, I found one male, two White Lesbians and one Maori woman there.

On the train, I sat down facing the front, by a window, on the seaward (right-hand) side, which (i.e. facing the front, by a window, on the seaward (right-hand) side) is always my preferred seating position, and opened the window, which (again) is what I always do, unless it is very cold or raining significantly. This occurred prior to the total replacement of these old trains with new, air-conditioned ones, in which the windows cannot be opened and (apparently) CCTV cameras are installed. According to NIWA, the temperature at Paraparaumu Airport at that time on that day was 12-13 degrees Celsius. Although I was wearing a green PVC raincoat because of the forecast rain in Wellington, it was not raining in Kapiti, as I recall, and it was not particularly cold. However, as my lawyer later suggested, some people may feel that the train picks up speed and causes an increased draft in the carriage.

It appeared to me that the circle of women had entered the same carriage, but I was not paying them any particular attention at that stage. They seemed to be seated behind me and across the aisle. I did not count them or locate specific individuals. To me they were just a group on the platform, who held no interest for me once they became individuals on the train. I did not notice the butch Lesbian at any stage, so she seems not to have boarded the train. Why would she have been on the platform, have glared at me, and then not boarded the train?4 The dark-haired man (Chris Vertongen) was seated directly behind me, as I found out later.

About one minute after the train left the station, the man behind me closed the window that was beside me, and which I had opened not long before. He did not say anything or attract my attention before, while, or after doing this, until I spoke to him .

I said that he should have asked first. He replied that some women (probably he used the word "ladies", but I can't remember specifically) had asked him to close the window, pointing to two women on the other side of the aisle (and slightly behind me), who seemed to me to have been part of the circle of women. Unless the women had deliberately wanted to provoke an argument, one would have expected them to ask me politely if I would mind closing the window. The fact that they asked Chris Vertongen to do it indicates that they knew him and that they possibly disliked me.

I told them that they should have asked me first. Getting no positive reaction to that, I said that I had rights, even though I was just a man -- which got those two women angry5. I was annoyed, but not really angry, and not at all enraged. The issue of the window was not an important issue to me, because it was just a matter of having enough fresh air in the train, as more and more people boarded it, during its journey. By the time the train reaches Porirua, the train is usually crowded. It was not particularly stuffy at that time. What became important to me was that I was being ganged up on6.

I did not hear anyone apologising for anything at any point, despite later witness testimony claiming to have apologised. My hearing is very good, in general, but the witnesses did little talking to me, even if they did some to each other.

I have a powerful/loud voice at times, but on this occasion I was not angry, although I was probably getting upset by being ganged up on. I did not shout or use any insulting words, racist terms, or swear words. Specifically, I did not use words such as “fucking”, “black”, “cunt” or “bitch”. No one else did, either, as far as I know.

At about that point, I reopened the window. I had to do that forcefully, because the windows had powerful springs, and the only way you could open or shut them was forcefully. I did not say anything as I opened the window.

No one was seated in the seat directly in front of me (at least, not until I started my 111 call, at which point I ceased noticing such things), but the Maori woman seated two seats in front of me, (Dawn Benefield), intervened in the argument, by saying that I should go back where I came from (which, of course, is a racist remark, but very common in the mouths of Maoris, when speaking to Whites. I remember, when young, being asked by a White male what I would do if a Maori told me to go back where I came from, and I said that I would say, “Go back to Hawaiiki”, and that is exactly what I said on this occasion).

She had turned so that I could see her face in profile. I said, “That’s racist!” She said she had been here longer than I had. I said that I was older than her (meaning that I had possibly been here longer than her). Then I said she should go back to Hawaiiki. That was all that was said between the two of us, although the exact order of the statements may have been slightly different.

At some point in the above interchange between the Maori woman and myself, the man behind me said, "Don't argue with a woman," or some words to that effect7.

The Maori woman rushed out of her seat, came up the aisle, entered the space in front of the seat next to me, and punched me once, right-handed, on the left side of my face, and immediately rushed back to her seat. I felt only a bruise on the left side of my chin, although the police later told me that all they could see was a cut to my nose. However, the colour photograph(s) reveal(s) purple bruising on the left part of my lips and chin. No one touched or restrained her. She did not appear particularly angry or say anything. Her action appeared to be impersonal, cool, and efficient.8

I stood up, and was immediately restrained by a person behind me (Chris Vertongen, I suppose)9, who pinned my arms to my sides by encircling them and my chest in a vice-like grip. He did not appear angry or say anything. His action appeared to be impersonal, cool, and efficient10. I did not do anything to him, nor did I even attempt to do anything to him. He let me go after a few seconds.

I did not even have time to think of retaliating against the woman. I did not assault her or anyone else. No one touched my arm, apart from Chris Vertongen, as already described. As demonstrated by my description of her in my 111 call, I did not feel particularly hostile towards Dawn Benefield, who seemed to be an attractive, middle-class person of the sort that I would normally get on well with.

The entire incident, from the opening of the window to Chris Vertongen grabbing me probably lasted no more than one minute.

Then there was general hubbub, I said I was phoning the police, I started to phone 111, and there was a shocked exclamation from one of the two women diagonally behind and to my left (I think it was the one near the window). The woman next to her, in the aisle seat (I surmise that it was the blonde, Irene Walker) calmed her down with a reassuring response.

Eventually some railway personnel arrived . While I was doing my 111 call, waiting to be connected to the Police, I think, I noticed that we were pulling into Paekakariki station. At first this startled me, I wondered whether I should stop my call, but then I immediately realised that I should continue with my call, which I did.

No one approached or touched me, although my attention was on my 111 call for some time, and I might not have noticed someone sitting next to me during the call. I also did not notice whether someone sat down in the seat in front of me at this time. I did not notice who got on or off the train at Paekakariki11 . I had no other interactions with any other passenger (e.g. none with anyone sitting or standing at the seat in front of me).

Constable Waterworth arrived and asked me to get off the train and interviewed me about the incident. He asked me to sign what he had written, but it was so inaccurate that I refused to sign it.

When the police arrested me, I walked down the platform with the two of them in silence. It seemed to me that an orgasmic shudder went through the two of them, as if they were super-delighted to have arrested me. I do not recall talking to them in the police car, although I would not have refused to answer questions in the car.

I will not go into much detail about what happened at the police station. Once the police decided to charge me, I refused to make a videotaped statement to them but asked to speak to a lawyer. I asked to be photographed and Constable Waterworth photographed me in what seemed to me to be a professional manner.

I discussed the legal issues surrounding conspiracies with the two of them. The senior of the two constables, Joshua Smith, said that he was unable to believe my version of events because of the sheer number of witnesses who had contradicted me. That attitude is inconsistent with his later refusal to drop charges when I proved that most of his witnesses were unreliable and probably conspired together. He just reduced the number of witnesses so that I could not prove a conspiracy!

That shows that the police are not doing their job properly – or perhaps they are just doing the wrong job. Initially, the police had to decide who to charge, if anyone, and they seemed to do it on the basis of who they thought was guilty. From that point on, they seemed to be interested solely in getting a conviction – whether I was guilty or not.

At one point, Constable Smith asked me if I wished to speak to the Senior Sergeant, but since I had written a Web article saying that he should be sacked, I declined.

The first lawyer I contacted was Michael Bott, who had been President of the New Zealand Men’s Rights Association, prior to going to Law School. He said he had a heavy cold and refused to mount a conspiracy defence, which he regarded as hopeless. He told me to plead self-defence. He apparently asked the police for CCTV footage from Paraparaumu station, but the police had not procured it themselves, so that was a waste of time. By the time my next lawyer, Peter Foster, contacted the train company for the CCTV footage, it had been wiped. I had changed lawyers because I was not prepared to say in court that I had hit someone in self-defence when I had not hit anyone at all. I had not even contemplated hitting anyone!

I hired Peter Foster on condition that he mount a conspiracy defence, since my concern was to unmask the conspirators, rather than to get off with the least penalty possible. However, since I made the mistake of communicating with the police before the trial about the unreliability of their witnesses, half of whom the police therefore dumped, Peter Foster felt that a conspiracy defence was impossible (even if he would ever have contemplated such a defence, which I am unsure about). He said that you could not cross-examine your own witnesses in such circumstances, so he did not call the witnesses who the police had dumped. Subsequently, my lawyer at the High Court disagreed with Peter Foster on this point.

Since one male witness had stated to the police that Dawn Benefield had hit me, Peter Foster decided to use him to try to undermine to testimony of the prosecution witnesses. That witness was one of two men (both involved in local politics) who had boarded the train at Paekakariki. The other one was prosecution witness, Stephen John Barton Eckett.

I had told my lawyer that the whole event had finished before the train even got to Paekakariki, since I had been on the phone to the police when we drew in to Paekakariki station. However, my lawyer wanted to use that one favourable witness, so he asked me how certain I was that the event had been over before Paekakariki. I said that I was 75% sure, and he said he could proceed with his defence plan, since I wasn’t 100% sure.

I am now 100% sure that the event was over before we reached Paekakariki. You have to realise that, when you have been assaulted, lied about by a group of people, arrested and then charged when you are actually the victim, you are not going to be particularly focussed on the issue of whether the assault happened when the train was moving or at a station! Also bear in mind that I had had to read several witness statements that were composed almost completely of lies, so I had to partly live in this fictional world that these people had created, which was very stressful!

At the District Court hearing, my one witness (apart from myself) broke down under cross-examination, since he hadn’t actually seen what he had said he had seen, and the judge was probably biased, so we lost the case. I expect what happened was that my witness had seen the witches and harpies (Irene Walker et al.) in the train telling each other what to say to the police, and he found that unfair and so decided to make up another story. It is amazing how both the police and the defence concentrate on tactics and have little concern for the truth!

 

NOTES

1. This is the first of several facts that, cumulatively, indicate the possibility of a conspiracy, although that was far from my mind when I saw this group.

2.This is the second of several facts that, cumulatively, indicate the possibility of a conspiracy, although that was far from my mind when I saw this event. That a female-headed group would ignore a male is typical of the syndrome that people who have been in the Men’s Movement for a time come to associate with dedicated feminists.

3.This is the third of several facts that, cumulatively, indicate the possibility of a conspiracy, although that was far from my mind when I saw this happen.

4.This is the fourth of several facts that, cumulatively, indicate the possibility of a conspiracy, although that was far from my mind when I saw this happen.

5.This is the fifth of several facts that, cumulatively, indicate the possibility of a conspiracy, although that was far from my mind when I saw this happen.

6.Once I thought that I was being ganged up on, the notion of a conspiracy probably occurred to me.

7.This is the sixth of several facts that, cumulatively, indicate the possibility of a conspiracy. That gives a clue as to his mentality -- i.e. that he is some male feminist lickspittle who thinks that men have to obey women at all times. I first came across this type of man at a select committee hearing into a Domestic Violence-related bill. There must be a whole subculture of what I would call “Women’s Refuge types”, with male hangers-on of the “NNSVS type”, although that is a generalisation which certainly does not apply to all adherents of those two organizations.

8.This is the seventh of several facts that, cumulatively, indicate the possibility of a conspiracy.

9.This is the eighth of several facts that, cumulatively, indicate the possibility of a conspiracy. Since the group on the platform had comprised almost exclusively females, why was it that the sole male was seated directly behind me and was a big specimen (I am 1.86 metres tall, weigh 100 Kg. and am well-muscled in my upper body.)

10.This is the ninth of several facts that, cumulatively, indicate the possibility of a conspiracy. Another indication of a conspiracy is the huge number of bare-faced, defamatory lies that were told about me.

11.One reason why it might be hard to distinguish a conspiracy from a non-conspiracy is that Wellingtonians are very politicised as regards Left-Right and men’s-women’s issues, and I am a bit of a celebrity in that regard. Consequently, I cannot rule out the possibility that some people would volunteer false testimony either on my behalf or (especially) against me.

 

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